


Hammurabi

by kittydesade



Category: Human Target (TV 2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. One of Guerrero's victims decides to exact vengeance on him, torturing and taking from him that which Guerrero took years ago. Now Chance has to get him out of this mess, learning a few new things about his old friend in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hammurabi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Misachan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misachan/gifts).



> (Written before 2x10 Cool Hand Guerrero, so, yes. Some facts will not align.)

"Speak."

"Really." Guerrero couldn't say he was surprised. He'd figured it would happen sooner or later. Ames was a good kid, but she overreached. And didn't know when to shut up. He guessed she was going to get in trouble the second she pitched that scene in the bar. Now he was going to have to bail her out before Chance heard about it and got himself involved. "All right, what do you..."

A horn sounded behind him as he jerked and slammed on the brakes, knuckles white on phone and steering wheel. An instant later he corrected and drove down the next blind alley, parking behind a dumpster. All thoughts of Ames out of his mind, now, this wasn't about her. This was about a different lady in his life.

"Where and when." As he backed out of the alley he started to speed up, swinging the Cadillac around a corner tighter than it was supposed to be. Part of his mind took down the meet location and time, tucked it away for analysis of how defensible it was (not very) and how much time he had (not much) before he had to be there.

He drove faster.

"I'll be there." He didn't make threats. He didn't tell them what would happen if they didn't keep their word. If they knew his reputation they had a pretty good idea already, and they had to know at least some of it to get this number. And if by some miracle of stupidity they didn't know his reputation or didn't believe it, well, they'd find out. No threats. He didn't waste his time on threats. Not when the clock was ticking.

The next few steps were simple. Get to the house before the bad guys got there. If they hadn't gotten the kids yet, get the kids to Chance. He'd keep them safe. His breathing slowed, evened out as the plan solidified in his head, hands opening and smoothing out over the wheel. Get the kids safe, first of all. She wouldn't forgive him if he did otherwise.

Then get to this meeting place and find out what was going on. Do what he had to do.

\---

Chance looked up when Winston cleared his throat, but quickly looked back down at the new weapons catalog Ilsa had brought by. Then it registered and his head jerked back up again.

On Winston's left was a maybe taller than average young teenage girl. Her hair was straight and dyed a dirty shade of blonde, streaked with bright blue on one side and bright pink on the other, giving her a vaguely Christina Aguilera look. Extensions, the colored bits, at least. She had a backpack over one shoulder that was stuffed with books and probably clothes by the shape and location of the lumps, and one hand fiddled with the straps. She wore jeans that had seen better days, sneakers still grass-stained from the soccer field, and a P!nk t-shirt.

On his right was a tiny girl maybe six years old, maybe less, light brown hair and piercing pale blue eyes.

Chance felt his eyebrows creeping upwards, the blood fading from his skin. "Winston..."

His friend opened his mouth to reply, but the P!nk shirt girl got there first. "Yeah, um, this hippie looking dude said we should come up here and stick close to you. Said you were supposed to protect us."

He rose from his desk, mouth open to ask what was going on when the phone rang. He glared at it for a second before Winston shrugged and gestured for him to get it, as he ushered the kids into the kitchen. It rang again before he grabbed it from its cradle. "This is Chance."

"Hey, dude."

He didn't know whether to kill him or go after him. He kind of wanted to do both at once. "Where are you?"

"Heading to a meet. With a little luck, this will all be over in a couple hours." Neither of them believed in luck. Guerrero didn't think this was going to be over in a couple of hours, that was why he'd sent the kids over to him. If he'd thought it would be that easy he would have given them a couple bucks and told them to go grab a burger somewhere. The kids were there because they were in danger.

Chance leaned back in the chair. "Cute kid. The little one, I mean." Dammit, why hadn't Guerrero told him? Or had he tried and Chance hadn't been paying attention? Five, six years old, that would have been right around the time that everything went to shit. Or started to, anyway.

But what about the older girl?

"Yeah, she is, isn't she." Guerrero's voice didn't waver. Not that he'd expected it to, but he had hoped his old friend would give him some kind of clue as to what was going on. "Their Mom's in trouble, I'm going to try to get her out of it."

So it was a rescue operation. That was something, knowing it was a rescue, a hostage negotiation most likely. In the way that Guerrero negotiated with anyone. Chance would have to put it together later; Guerrero would have left the second the kids were in Winston's care, which meant he was already on his way to the meet and it was too late to both arrange for the safety of the girls and follow him.

"Be careful. Check in in an hour when you can."

"Sure, Mom." He could hear the eyerolling over the phone, and responded with some of his own.

"I mean it. You don't want to leave these kids with me, they'll be a bad influence."

It should have made him laugh, at least snort. It didn't. "Just take care of them, okay? I'll be back as soon as I can."

Chance glared at the phone as it emitted a petulant dial tone at him. He didn't know much more than he had when this had all started, and nothing he knew made him feel any better. Guerrero had come to the building, not even come up to the office since Chance hadn't seen him, dropped off the girls with Winston and taken off to rescue some woman from some people. The mother of the two children. In all likelihood, though he had only his suspicions to go on at this point, the mother of at least one of his children.

Were they both his? Who _was_ she?

He rubbed his palms against his temples, grumbling against the headache it was giving him. If he was lucky, Guerrero would take care of business, call back in an hour, and he or someone else ir maybe it would even be this mysterious woman would come and pick up the girls and it would all be over. Possibly without any answers at all, but he could live with that. What he couldn't live with was his friend suddenly caught up in the midst of an obviously dangerous and emotionally loaded case. And not knowing enough to be able to do a damn thing about it. Not even who might be gunning for the kids and, dammit, Guerrero knew better.

Maybe the older girl knew. Chance pushed back from the table and headed into the kitchen to ask.

\---

"You're a font of information, my friend. Thanks."

Winston shrugged his ponderous shoulders. Today, at least, they were ponderous. "Don't look at me, he's your friend."

And that was exactly the problem. His friend was in trouble, and he couldn't do anything about it. Except watch the kids. Which wasn't something he was used to or equipped to handle, he was supposed to be out there doing something. He couldn't put kids in the line of fire to track the assassin back to whoever was going after them. He couldn't just sit here and let his friend walk into danger. And he didn't have a damn clue what was going on.

"He'll let us know when he's done," Chance shrugged, fooling absolutely no one.

Winston gave him the look that let him know he was fooling absolutely no one, sparing a moment to move his coffee mug further away from the homework papers spreading over that end of the table. "Uh-huh."

That was the other thing. They couldn't talk business with the girls around. "It's not like it's the first time he's gone off on personal business."

Yes, it is, Winston's look said. His voice made a little grunt and said nothing at all.

"He'll be fine."

"Uh-huh," Winston cocked his head at the door and Chance nodded, following him out. They could talk about this out of the kitchen and still keep an eye on the girls as well as anything else. Winston barely waited until they were out of the room, too. "What happened the _last_ time he went off on personal business."

"Well..." Chance shrugged, spreading his hands with a helpless little wince. Winston knew what Guerrero did. It wasn't like he couldn't imagine what happened when their friend took some time off and went out on his own.

Okay, his friend more than Winston's. And Guerrero spent more time out on his own than working with their little company.

"Well, there was this one time..."

Winston folded his arms over his chest and stared.

Chanced sighed. "On this personal business in particular? It was a while ago. About... five or six years, seven years ago. Just after we met. Things were kind of awkward for a while between us. After..." He made himself say it as a reference point. "Katherine. He went off on his own, when he came back he was... quieter. Different. I don't know."

It was hard to explain to Winston, who'd only known Guerrero as he was now. Ten, fifteen years ago they'd all been different. Younger, stupider, more impatient and arrogant. More trigger happy. Six, seven years ago they'd all been on edge from various forces outside their control, which was in and of itself enough to get them both on edge. Five years ago...

Five years ago, Chance had first seen that look in Guerrero's eyes like he knew what Chance was talking about. Even if neither of them talked about it. He hadn't asked and Guerrero hadn't told. But he knew his friend well enough to know what was going on, especially when he put the little pieces together. Things the other man did or didn't do. Things he used to do but had stopped. Hell, the fact that he was working with Chance on this, that they were still working together after all these years, it wasn't just loyalty and friendship. That was a big part of it, sure, but Guerrero was still in the business. And still reaching out to Chance.

"He'll be back." Pretending to the same nonchalance he always used when talking about Guerrero.

Winston didn't buy it now, as he didn't buy it then. Didn't buy much of anything either of them pretended, when it involved Guerrero being simple. The only thing that man did that was simple was pull a trigger on a gun. Everything that led up to that point was complex. "It's been almost two hours. Isn't he already late?"

Chance had been trying not to think about that. "Yeah," he winced. Then headed for a different room.

"Oh, no. You're not going to do what I think you're going to do..." Winston said it, more than called it after him.

"Relax, Winston, okay? He asked me to look after the girls, I'm going to look after the girls. I'm not going to do anything stupid."

\---

"I guess this is looking after the girls."

Naomi was crawling all over the back of the limousine. Stretch SUV was what they called it when they pulled up, but it was a limousine. Jeanne looked around, wide-eyed, but was calmer than her sister. It gave her the appearance of being her father's daughter, at least to Chance.

It was also kind of unnerving in a five year old.

"Look, he's probably fine. He's been in a lot worse situations than this, it's a simple ... negotiation." Chance decided to leave out the word 'hostage.' Even though the teenager's head jerked his way and she was now looking at him like she didn't know whether to be suspicious or afraid. He smiled back at her and she immediately settled on suspicious, which to his mind was better than afraid.

"Uh-huh." Winston gave him the eye, but shook his head. "Except he's not thinking straight. This is..." He spread his hands, clearly at a loss for words sufficient to describe Guerrero's state of mind at the moment and equally clearly requiring that Chance come up with them.

Chance thought back to that time, when Guerrero had disappeared for those months. Was it a whole year? Hard to remember, he had to think in terms of seasons and events, had he been gone by April and back by December or was it January again before he'd seen the smaller, slighter assassin.

"Involved," was what he settled for. It was as good an expression as any. "He's involved, but that doesn't mean he can't get everyone out of this. You know how good he is. And now he's motivated." That sounded limp and weak even to Chance's ears. As though he wasn't motivated before. Guerrero never had a problem with motivation, now he would be vicious. He would be as cruel as he could be and still be effective. And, yeah, Chance thought his judgment would be compromised. He'd never seen his friend like that before, not about any woman. Guerrero was good, he was deadly, but right now he was unpredictable and probably at least a little erratic. That didn't bode well for either him or her.

"Motivated," Winston snorted, facing front again. His grumpy skepticism hid worry, Chance knew, but it wasn't making the girls any more comfortable.

"Come on, he'll be fine. He'll be back before you know it, he's like a... a ninja or something." Better than a hitman, anyway. Or an assassin, mercenary, all the other things Guerrero was and had been. Assassins were unreal, cold, frightening people in movies played by Jean Reno or something. Ninjas were just awesome.

"A ninja?" Winston started, but caught Chance's look back at the kids. Naomi was trying hard not to look like she was paying attention. "Yeah, I guess. If you like your ninjas pocket-sized."

Chance gave silent thanks Guerrero wasn't around to hear this. "Pocket sized? He's..."

No, he couldn't really argue with that, not when he'd used the smaller man's lack of height and weight to pick him up and throw him around more than once.

"That just makes him stealthier."

"Pocket sized?" Naomi finally dared to enter the conversation. "He didn't..." Something. It would be hard for her to tell how tall he was with him slouching the way he was, and her being a teenager.

"You should see him next to Winston." Chance pointed, grinning. It was true, they looked like the kind of odd couple that would make comedy gold in some movie somewhere. Until one or both of them opened his mouth and things turned deadly serious.

But that wasn't what she needed to hear right now. Right now she needed to hear them be light-hearted, casual about the whole thing. Her sister needed to hear adults who weren't worried or upset, who were confident, and who would take care of everything.

And Chance was pretty sure Guerrero would take care of everything. Ninety-percent sure.

\---

If he believed in karma, that was exactly what he'd call it. It wasn't the first time he'd been in the trunk of a car, but it was still annoying. He kept still and listened. They'd grabbed him and tranked him, which meant they wanted him alive for something. They'd been no rougher than they had to be throwing him in the trunk, and they'd used duct tape to keep him still, which meant they wanted him pretty much intact. Fine by him. That gave him more time to figure out what was going on.

The girls were safe. _She_ wasn't. But if they had any hope of getting leverage over him, of him not killing everyone the second they let him out of the car, she was alive and mostly unharmed. Healthy enough that she could be left on her own for a few hours without risk of death.

Whatever they wanted, they wanted both of them alive for it.

Odds were good she would be used as leverage. They'd said they had her, they implied they were grabbing the kids only he'd got to them first, that gave them less leverage than they wanted. Still enough to get him to do some things, at least, but if he only had her to spring then that meant less time he had to waste jumping through hoops.

The second option was revenge. He'd threatened enough people's families to get them to do what he wanted, carried out enough of those threats to understand how that worked. If it was revenge, there wasn't anything he could do about it except to make sure that the people working this action never touched her or the girls again. If it was revenge, nothing but death would make that certain. Everyone's death.

The process took a minute or two to think through. He had options, and he had information coming to him in the form of a steady stream of sounds and textures as they drove. Sounds were familiar. A distant foghorn, the seams in the concrete as they went over a bridge. Sounds of talking, of busy intersections or quiet streets. He'd figure it out when he got to some place still. Right now he was collecting data and arranging it sequentially in his head.

They stopped inside a garage. He felt the bumps as they went over the door seams, heard the echo of the sliding metal door slamming shut. Not a maintenance garage, probably, a big spacious one. Maybe mostly empty.

They pulled him out of the trunk and started shoving him along, confirming his impression of a mostly empty garage when they didn't bother to steer him around anything potentially in his way. The hood was still on, though. Laziness or prudence, he wasn't sure which. Two steps up to the door, so it was a house. Or something built like a house. Through one corridor, and now they were steering him more directly, one hand on his arm and the other on his shoulder from behind. He still didn't resist.

They sat him down on a chair somewhere on the main floor and closed the door behind him. Now, maybe, he'd get some answers.

He was looking forward to this.

\---

"Do you know who I am?"

Of course he did. Guerrero knew exactly who he was the moment his hood was yanked off. He stared back at the man blankly as though he'd never seen him before in his life, as though the other man had made no impression whatsoever. Just to piss him off.

It did. His face twisted and he made a gesture; somewhere in the other room, a woman screamed.

Guerrero's face blanked.

"You do know who I am," he nodded. "So you can imagine why I'm doing this to you."

To you, he noticed. Not to her. Whatever else he'd been and done, he didn't discount the importance of other people, the fact that family was composed of people. People who had bonded to each other in ways they could exploit; seeing a family as a group of people was advantageous to him and how he worked.

This guy didn't work like him. He wasn't a professional, he didn't see a family as people. They were a way to get to _him_ , personally. All right, then.

"I know you were a punk who didn't listen, didn't protect your family when you should have by backing off or getting them out of town." Not my fault, his tone implied, that they died. Which wasn't true, he had gone and tortured and killed them, yeah. It was his fault. He was a bad man, but admitting that wouldn't get her out of this situation, it would just leave their attacker with nowhere to put his anger. If Guerrero pissed him off enough maybe he would vent on him, leave her alone.

And it was kind of true. Anyone in this profession who didn't expect their nearest and dearest to be targeted by their enemies was an idiot, living in a dream world. It was why Guerrero had ultimately separated himself from her, with her reluctant blessings.

"What does that make you, then?" the man sneered. "You took my family from me. Now I'm going to do the same to you. Only where I had the luxury of ignorance until I got the phone call saying they found the bodies, you'll have the privilege of watching everything I do to all three of them. Your lovely lady, there. Your little girls. One big happy family reunion."

Guerrero's face remained blank. Certain muscles along his jaw and eyes tightened, that was it.

"You'll get to watch while I turn them into shivering piles of meat. You can enjoy every scream, every shudder, every..."

"You've obviously rehearsed this," Guerrero interrupted, affecting a bored tone. "Your delivery could use some work, but the writing's not bad."

Gerald Carver punched him across the face. It hurt. Not the worst hit he'd taken, though, by far.

"Take him in with her," he growled, and Guerrero felt himself tipped backwards and rolled (what, did they have the chair on a dolly?) down the hall and into the living room. "Might as well give them some time to catch up while we wait for Lloyd to get back with the kids."

His lips never moved but his eyes were smiling bright and fierce. Lloyd wouldn't get to lay a finger on those kids before it was snapped off. Not with Chance watching them.

\---

 

The living room once had had big bay windows; the glass was still there. Now they were all boarded up from the outside. The thug who'd rolled him in there cut the ties holding him to the chair just enough that he could, with some effort, free himself from the rest. Then he backed off. A big metal gate, security partition, something, slammed down behind him.

Sounded like Carver had made some improvements to the house since Guerrero had last been here.

He worked off the rest of his bonds and picked himself up to his feet, slow and creaking, before finally lifting his head to look across the room.

She was knitting. Calm and composed, she hadn't even looked up when they threw him in and slammed the door down behind him. He still had a couple of those sweaters, too. This project looked like a pair of socks. Her needles flashed reflected light in slivers of yellow on the faded white wall and clicked together as she passed the yarn over her fingers. Her hair had no more gray in it than when he'd seen her last, though he thought her face was sadder, somehow.

She'd still never looked so beautiful.

"Hey," he managed after a second. She nodded, but didn't look up.

Probably she blamed him for what was going on. And she'd be right to do so.

"I'm sorry..." he started, and as her needles stopped clicking he stopped trying to find words to finish that sentence.

She pushed her knitting down on the needles and stopped, and only then did she look up at him. "Whe--"

"They're safe. They're with a friend. A colleague." Not that he had ordinary kinds of friends, but it might be reassuring to know that the kids were with someone as competent and capable.

She smiled, only a little. "Of course they are." And he realized she hadn't expected anything else of him.

He should have had something, then. Should have thought of some plan to get them out of this, or at least to kill every last one of the bastards holding them there. But for the next couple of minutes all he could think of was how sad she looked, how long it had been since he'd seen her. How she felt in his arms.

 _His mind was swimming, which wasn't something that happened to him, not with sex. Her hands moved along his sweat-slick skin and somehow they managed not to tangle up in any uncomfortable way. He went through the motions after by rote, take care with the condom and glass of water and tissues. Normally, this would be the part where they'd take several minutes to rest and then she'd leave and never see him again; he paid in advance for anonymity and no questions asked._

 _Tonight she curled up against him and he wrapped her in his arms and that felt right. She tucked her head to his shoulder and her fingertips continued their little dance over his chest and that felt right. She was a warm, solid weight against his body, and that felt right too._

 _He knew she was tracing the scars, old and recent, and he waited for the questions but they didn't come._

 _Her breathing evened out after a little while, as she started to drift off to sleep without ever saying a word. She didn't have to, in some ways, her fingers curled and clinging on his shoulder said more than he needed to know. He closed his eyes and thought about what a bad idea this was, slipping down into unconsciousness himself._

"How is she?" he heard himself asking, soft. Light. She picked up her knitting again.

"She's all right." Present circumstances excepted, of course. "She's started school. Her teacher says she's exceptionally bright for her age."

Guerrero smiled a little. "Takes after her Mom."

She chuckled softly, but only for a second until it turned into a cough. The movement shifted her blouse a little, revealing a small reddened welt where something had been attached or pushed against her skin. Electrical torture, he thought. It gave new explanations for the tension in her hands and shoulders, and it could be kept up for a while without visible signs, giving him hope that they hadn't tortured her much yet.

He didn't know how much they had or hadn't tortured her, but he wasn't going to hold out hope that it wasn't much. She was still sitting down, because she hadn't wanted to or couldn't stand. Hard to say which.

"Stop that," she murmured, yarn sliding on metal needles that clicked softly against each other.

He looked up. "Stop what?"

"Stop trying to figure out what he did. It won't help."

 _"Stop trying to pretend you don't care. It doesn't help."_

 _He stared at her for a second, blinked once, and then he took a step into the room. The first step made the second one easier, and in another second or two he was standing in front of the crib. She was standing on the other side._

 _"You can't fight your feelings," she said again, quietly. So as not to wake the baby, he realized, and then realized again that this was their baby. Their child. His child. "All you can do is accept them, be honest about them, to yourself if not to anyone else. Fighting the rest of the world is one thing, fighting yourself is useless."_

 _His head jerked up to look at her, eyes wide and hot. She'd been looking at him a second ago, he caught the flicker of her eyes as she looked back down._

 _"What did you name her?"_

 _"Jeanne. After my grandmother."_

"I need to know if you can get out of here, if I get us loose." He didn't snap. He barely reacted. Everything he could bring to bear was focused on getting them out of there, analyzing their situation to find the most advantageous points. She looked, at least, like she could still stand and walk. "When," he added, realizing what he'd said. "I get us loose."

Her mouth twitched. "I can walk. I can even fight, if you want. As much as I can." Without being trained, without being practiced at it. He assumed that meant she hadn't suddenly started taking martial arts classes since he'd last seen her, but he smiled anyway. She always had been fierce. Independent. Willing to do the ruthless or brutal thing if it meant protecting what she felt needed to be protected.

 _She watched him unblinking and calm, more than most people did when confronted with an assassin, even one who wasn't there for them. "I know who you are."_

 _One eyebrow creaked up. "You do."_

 _"Of course. I try not to hire men to do work for me without knowing at least something about them."_

 _Pieces clicked into place, then. Her lack of shock and grief in private, when she was alone. The care she'd taken to shield her daughters from the investigation just in case it came out who had set the events in motion that pulled the trigger on her husband. The precautions requested for the job._

 _"I try not to get involved in personal business." Which was the closest he'd come to expressing his annoyance that he'd been dragged into a woman-scorned issue._

 _Her eyebrows shot up to match his expression. "I assure you, it was less personal than you imagine. My husband was threatening my daughter. I removed that threat."_

"What are you going to do?"

He sighed a little, looked around the room. Took in the furniture, everything they had been left with, everything he knew about the people who were working this job and what they could do. Everything he knew about their current situation, listing it off in his mind and trying to balance the ways it helped and hurt them. It was hard to come up with a plan through the roaring in his ears and the slowly-growing pain in his chest.

"I'm not sure yet. Gimme five minutes."

\---

They got ahold of the last number to call Guerrero's phone, then the coordinates of the phone call via the GPS satellites. Chance shook his head slightly at how easy it was, fifteen minutes worth of hacking and fast talking. Ten years ago it wouldn't have been that easy. Then again, ten years ago Guerrero hadn't had weak points like this.

He'd had Junior. But Junior hadn't been a weak point. Not really.

"Well, this isn't going to give us much of anything," Winston commented, looking around at the empty warehouse. The burner phone the kidnappers had used lay discarded on the floor, though he bent down and picked it up with a kerchief anyway. "By the time we run the prints..."

"Everything will be over, I know," Chance looked around, taking in the scene and imagining what might have taken place. Maybe they'd told him to get in the car, or maybe they'd just ambushed him. Even Guerrero could be ambushed and taken down, he'd done it, after all. Once upon a time.

Which might have been as much his reluctance to raise a hand against Junior, his old friend, as anything else, and what was that about weak points again?

"Looks like they stuffed him in the trunk of a car." Winston's voice held ironic amusement, but he wasn't smiling. "Can't have taken too long, somehow I don't see him getting into anyone's trunk on his own."

"He might if they threatened his kids," Chance muttered, circling slowly around the imprints in the dirt. Tire tracks, three sets of footprints, but not much scuffing. Deeper impressions in the smaller boot prints where they smeared. They'd dropped him quick.

"His kids?"

"The kids," Chance corrected himself, too late. He wasn't good at that sort of thing when it was pretty obvious that Winston knew already. And when he was more concerned with getting his friend back alive and intact than keeping a secret from Winston that didn't need to be kept all that closely. He thought. Maybe he was wrong about that. Secrets not being kept was what got them into this mess in the first place.

Hell, _having_ that kind of secret in the first place was what had gotten Guerrero into this mess. Somehow, Chance had always expected his old friend to know better.

"Uh-huh." Winston gave him that look that said he damn well knew better. "That's your story and you're sticking to it?"

Chance shook his head, and then looked up. "That's all I know for sure. He's never said and I never asked. Come on, would _you_ ask?" Either a friend or Guerrero. "It looks like they cold-cocked him and dumped him in, but they had to have gotten him here with the threat..."

"That little girl sure has his eyes."

Yeah, she did. Chance still didn't want to talk about it. "Only two guys, though, he must have taken the threat seriously. And if there were only two guys..."

"Doesn't sound like they were taking him seriously. Or they were counting on their hostage to keep him on his best behavior." Winston nodded, was about to say something else when his phone rang. Chance let him take the call while he looked around further; he'd contacted a detective he was still on good terms with, told him to check out the family's house and say it was an anonymous tip. As good a way as any of getting to look at both scenes at the same time.

Guerrero's car was still parked outside the warehouse, keys under the seat where he must have tossed them when he grabbed the gun. The engine wasn't warm anymore, but it wasn't ice cold or anything either. The car didn't have much in the way of dust on it. Guerrero hadn't left any message, he probably hadn't had time. Dammit. Damn the man, why couldn't he have just told Chance about this? Junior, maybe not, but he'd thought they'd gotten over that. Or past it, or whatever. He could have told Chance, and they could have worked it out. Figured something out, gotten protection for the family or...

Chance shook his head. He couldn't see Guerrero telling anyone about them, not when he'd spent the past several years keeping so determinedly single. His old friend had done his best to cut her and the girls out of his life. Had eliminated the possibility of it happening again, or getting close enough to any woman that he might be reminded of them. He shouldn't have expected anything else. And it didn't make a damn bit of difference because they were still captured, and that had gotten Guerrero captured, and now Chance was calmly and coolly freaking out.

"Hey, that was my buddy... you okay?" Winston stopped, looking over at Chance.

Who shrugged his shoulders and backed out of the car, straightening up again. "Fine. What'd he say?"

Winston didn't believe that either, but didn't argue this time. "He said the place had been ransacked. Whoever was going through it wasn't worried about making it look like everything was okay."

"They weren't intending on dragging this out." Chance's jaw popped quietly, then he shook his head.

"They also tore apart any place a kid might hide." Winston looked at him as though this was significant, but for the first minute or two Chance had no idea why. They already knew the kids were safe.

Then it clicked. "They don't know he handed the kids over to us." Beat. "They might not even know we exist."

"Which gives us the advantage. At least for now," Winston grumbled. "If they tracked him down and dug up enough dirt on him to know he has a wife and kids, chances are they know about you, me, the whole operation... Yeah, hold up, all right? I don't want to walk home, here..." Because Chance was already running for the car, to get back to the office or back to the girls. He wasn't sure where to go or where their enemies would hit first, and making the wrong choice could be ... not good. As usual, his brain stuttered on the right words.

He did pull up, at least, and wait for Winston.

\---

Inside of an hour Ames had convinced herself she was never that young even when she'd been that age. The kids were pretty adorable, though. Naomi was helping Jeanne with her homework, such as it was. Reading a book. Ames only half remembered when she'd had homework, even less so when it was just reading a book.

No, Guerrero was giving her homework. In a way. He called her up at strange hours of the day and night and brought her over to some undisclosed location to do something. Crack a safe, break into a secure building, once, just to watch him close a deal from a distance about something she didn't hear for something she couldn't see, and then he drove her back again. And now she was on babysitting duty. Which had been Chance's idea, or maybe Winston's, more than Guerrero's but it was still totally something he would have told her to do just to annoy her.

No point in taking it out on the girls, tough. That would be mean. Naomi was staring at her.

"What?"

"Nothing." The fourteen year old shrugged, bent her colorful hair back over her sister and their book.

Ames blinked back to when she had been helping Brody with his math homework, making it into engineering problems that they had to figure out to break into the places they were getting their backpacks and shoes from so he would pass his classes and they could keep on being unnoticed. These two girls had that same kind of hunched shoulders, shutting out the world around them. The two of them against the world.

She almost lost herself in the memories, then swore. Guerrero wouldn't thank her for not being observant when she was supposed to protect them.

Especially not when they got kidnapped under her watch. She didn't know what it was, and maybe it was nothing, but she'd only been in this house a couple hours. Even after a couple weeks she wasn't used to all the sounds and shifting of the home base. But this sounded different. It sounded wrong.

She trusted years and years of instincts, even if Guerrero didn't trust her yet. She put her arms around both kids' shoulders and steered them towards the panic room.

"What's wrong?"

"Just move. Questions later." She'd learned that early, and if these girls were going to survive this they'd better learn it too. Act first, ask questions of your protector later. If you got a chance to ask.

At least there was a panic room. Thank god for the paranoia of the ridiculously rich.

She caught a glimpse of the first gunman as they went into the room, and heard the footsteps approaching as the door whooshed shut behind them. That was close, close enough that she didn't take in the details of the room for a second. Something she rebuked herself for later.

When Ames straightened up again the other girls were looking at her, frightened. She shrugged a little. "I'll turn on the cameras, we'll stay in here for a bit. Make sure no one's out there." She didn't move to turn on the cameras, though. She knew what was out there, and it had a gun. She'd seen that gun in his hand.

"What is this?" Jeanne looked around. Not a where but a what. Ames was a little scared by that and she wasn't sure why.

Naomi looked around too, one hand running over the cool gray walls. "It's a panic room. Like in the movie with that chick from Twilight."

Ames just blinked. She had no idea what the girl was talking about. "Yeah, it's a panic room, but there's no... is that a cable hookup?" It was. On a computer, a fast computer once she booted it up, not connected to the security camera feeds but on its own dedicated power source and connection. She could contact the outside world from this. Better than a phone, although there was one of those too, on the opposite wall. Probably connected to a completely separate line.

"Sweet." She pulled up the chair and started typing. "Not to worry, kids, we'll have you out in a jif."

"A jif?"

Ames glared. She had a pretty good glare by now, too. She'd been learning from Guerrero.

\---

Two hours later the panic room door opened to a tall man with a Captain America face, broad shoulders, and a warm chest that smelled a little of sweat and plastic and probably gun oil. Ames got a good up-close and personal whiff as she grabbed him and hugged him around the waist. "Thank you! Thank you, thank you."

She couldn't be relieved to see him. Ames hadn't panicked over Guerrero finding out about her stealing his tools, she hadn't panicked over getting thrown into jobs with them, she wouldn't panic about being locked in a panic room for two hours with a teenage girl and her baby sister. Then Chance realized it was relief, but not from panic. Over Ames's shoulder, Naomi rolled her eyes and stretched as she came out of the small, windowless box.

He'd made sure the bodies were cleaned up. But he wasn't sure if it would have bothered Jeanne, looking around as she was. Maybe it was just the familiarity when he looked at her that was giving him that idea.

"Did you get a glimpse of anything, anyone stand out?"

She waited till Winston escorted the kids away before she started talking, businesslike and low tones. "Your basic off the shelf handguns, good quality but nothing exceptional, Brownings and Berettas. There were three of them that I saw, and they had ski-masks on. They moved like ..." Ames frowned, hands held in front of her, trying to describe it.

"Like paintballers instead of people used to actual weapons." Guns and bullets were heavier than paintball guns loaded with paint pellets. It made a difference when you held them out for ten, twenty minutes at a time waiting for someone to pop out at you. A person with a day job wouldn't know that. "So they probably aren't security or cops."

"Definitely not cops. Cops would have used Sigs."

"Cops mostly use Sigs, and that's been changing." Winston broke in from behind Chance, one eyebrow raised in a move that looked way better on Guerrero. From the look on Ames's face, she agreed. "But you're right, they would have looked like it. Trust you to know," he snorted. "So what else do we have?"

"They probably have a hacker working for them. They found this place, even if they didn't know about the panic room. They still know that Guerrero dropped the girls off with us, and they probably went down the list of places we'd be likely to hide out. I mean, let's face it. Ilsa isn't exactly ..."

"Down low?" Ames offered, irony dripping in her tone.

"I was going to go with clandestine, but, yeah, pretty much." It was one of the things he'd kind of missed about working the other side of the fence. Or even working before Ilsa had come along. Some things you just needed done quickly, quietly, and anonymously. Waving around black credit cards was not anonymous.

Ames nodded, but she was staring after the girls. "What's with the kids, anyway? Why do these people want them so bad, and what do they want with Guerrero?"

Chance looked over at Winston, warning him not to say anything. A warning that was useless and overblown, he realized, off Winston's slightly shocked stare in return. Just how badly had he been glaring? "Not sure," he lied easily, not looking at her. "Guerrero just said to keep the kids safe till he got back."

Winston broke in, thank god, before Ames could pull away from the distraction the four or five year old presented and ask why Guerrero cared so much about two strange kids. "We think they have something to do with an old case he was working..."

"What, like that woman whose husband you killed?"

Chance twitched. Winston pinched the bridge of his nose. Neither of them said anything.

Ames looked at them, then back at the younger girl. Who somehow sensed that she was being watched and look back up at the both of them with her light brown hair framing her face in such a familiar way that even Ames got it now. She jerked her gaze over to Chance, incredulous, then back to the girl. Then back to Chance, who had to fight the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, too. It looked like the right gesture for the moment.

"You're kidding..."

"Ames..."

"You are _kidding_ me!" One more glance back and forth. "Oh my god, tell me you're kidding. Tell me that is not..."

"Ames!" Chance interrupted, and at volume. Both girls looked back at them, and he ignored them. Easiest way, he figured, to persuade them that this wasn't about them or relevant to them in any way, and nothing they wanted to eavesdrop on. This house was too damn small for his taste, or maybe just this series of rooms. Too damn small and too many open hallways.

Ames quieted down, verbally at least. She still looked like she was going to explode.

"You don't know that's true, we don't know that's true," Winston told her, exasperated, while Chance was still coming up with words. "And until he tells you from his own mouth that that's the case, I wouldn't believe it. Maybe not even then," he added. Which was true, the man lied smooth as oil when it suited his purpose.

Chance knew him, though. He wouldn't lie about this at least to some people. At least to two people. He also knew he wasn't one of them. And he was strangely okay with that.

He wasn't okay with Ames getting distracted by the fact that her idol had a family. "In any case, that's not the point. The point is that we need to figure out who these people are, and stop them." By killing them. Or so his tone seemed to say. "And now that they've come after us, maybe they'll give us some idea of who they are and where they're holding... them."

Because the girls had come out from around the corner and were staring at them now. Well, Naomi was looking around at all of them. But Jeanne was staring at him with those eyes that seemed to hold the exact same question her father's eyes always did when the mission was teetering on the edge of disaster. _Well, dude? Now what?_

Now what, indeed.

\---

"Are you going to get my Mom back?"

Enlightened self-interest. That was something he didn't often see in a girl her age. Not that he often met girls her age. Chance's head was spinning. It was a frighteningly adult question for a five year old. He wondered if Guerrero had been that adult at five and then decided that for his sanity's sake he was never thinking about five year old Guerrero ever again.

"We're going to try." He couldn't do other than be honest with her. With his clients, honesty was usually the best policy when it came to expectations. With children... he wasn't sure how he felt about that but something in the way she looked at him demanded honesty.

The way both of them looked at him. Guerrero might not be Naomi's father, as obvious as it ws, but he'd certainly had some kind of influence over the child. Or her Mom was one of those women Guerrero kept hitting on when they came around as clients, the kind of women who kicked ass in their own environment. Either way, Naomi looked at him as though she were demanding something.

"I don't know what's going to happen. He didn't tell me much about what's going on. But we're going to try to get your Mom back." Chance spread his hands a little; he didn't want to promise they'd get her back when he didn't know, himself.

"And your friend."

Naomi turned her baby sister by the shoulders while Ames and Chance gaped, steered her back towards her book. Winston, in an unaccustomed show of paternalism, helped her. "I'll keep an eye on her," he told the older girl, as though speaking to another adult. "Sounds like you two have some things you want to discuss."

 _Thanks ever so,_ was the look Chance threw his friend.

Winston smiled and lied that _you're welcome_ through his teeth.

"Shall we?" If he was going to treat her like a client he might as well treat her like a client, and gestured over to the couch and tables.

Naomi looked between him and Ames for a second, but the older girl obviously wasn't going anywhere. She also wasn't talking, thankfully. Chance was in no mood for her crush to start rearing its head and turning her into a babbling idiot, as amusing as it was when Guerrero was around and everything was okay. As okay as it got.

"For the record, yes, I am worried about my friend. But I'm also worried about your Mom, and I know my friend better. I know he can handle himself, and I know he's gotten himself out of worse messes than this." He tried to sound braver and more confident than he felt.

"Do you even know what this is?"

Too smart for her own good. He shook his head. "I'm not sure yet. Except that someone grabbed your Mom and tried to grab you to use against him. They grabbed her first, then..."

Ames made a strangled noise. "Chance..."

Naomi folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.

"You're not as good at it as he is," he told her. "They grabbed her, then used her to get him to play ball. Probably gave him a picture with the day's paper or something as proof of life. They..."

"Chance!"

He looked back at Ames.

"Seriously, does she really need to know that? This isn't her life, and once it's over she'll go back to normal and this will all be a bad memory, and the less detailed that memory..."

And now both of them were looking at Ames, who had realized she was being stared at by a fourteen year old as though she were crazy. The young woman shifted in her seat, tossing her hair over her shoulder and pulling her mask back into place. Chance stared at her a second or two longer, filing that information away for future discussion with Winston and Guerrero and looked back at Naomi.

"They've got all the moves right, but they're not ... smooth. About it," hard to explain in words a fourteen year old would understand, but he thought he was doing a decent job at it. "They've learned how to do this probably the same way you have, by watching television and movies. They don't know how to torture, threaten, or kill someone as smoothly as they would if they were doing this for a li-- living. And that's going to make them slip up."

"And that's where you'll get them?"

Good, that was good. She seized on that rather than on what he'd almost said, or implied. She didn't need to know what Guerrero did for a living if she didn't know already. "That's what we're planning on. In the meantime, all he has to do is keep himself and your Mom alive."

To his surprise and Ames's near shock, Naomi smiled. "That shouldn't be too hard. He's pretty badass."

Ames narrowed her eyes at the girl, the look of a young woman who suddenly sees a competitor. Chance bit his lower lip to keep from laughing. "What do you know about him?" she asked the girl.

And Naomi just shrugged. "Bits and pieces. Stuff I've overheard." She looked over, not at Ames, but at Chance. "I know he stays away because he doesn't want Mom to get in trouble like this. They don't know I heard them talking, but I remember. And, I mean, it makes sense, right? If you've got a guy who's all James Bond like he is, you don't want to be his girlfriend." Ames blinked. "That's totally the first person they go after."

"They?" Chance's voice sharpened a little.

The girl shrugged. "Whoever his enemies are. 'cause he's got 'em. You don't live like that and not make enemies."

This would be the part where he would mourn the innocence of a child, except that she hadn't lost it. This wasn't real to her yet. It was still movies, she was still thinking about comic book spies and Sean Connery and the bad guys getting blown up, the good guys winning in the end. She didn't know how often guys like him and Guerrero won.

Or that Guerrero wasn't the good guy she thought he was.

Chance wondered if their mother knew.

"We'll figure it out," was all he said. "Whoever they are, they've made a serious mistake." It was the kind of bravado talk people did in movies. And it worked with Naomi, now, even if it probably shouldn't have. "You just look out for your sister, okay? We'll settle the rest."

She nodded.

\---

They had the freedom of the room, at least. It wasn't much freedom but they could move around and talk to each other. Guerrero wondered for a second if that was meant to be its own kind of torture or if it was just an oversight on the part of Gerald Carver. He paced around the room, picking things up and examining them for useful potential and putting them back down again. She kept knitting, bringing one foot onto her chair. It worked out; he didn't have to worry about her stressing her body too much, and he could keep an eye on her.

Even if there wasn't much reason to keep an eye on her right now. He felt better that she was staying in one place, where he knew where she was.

She kept swearing and going back and tearing things out and redoing them. It was the only sign she gave that she was at all afraid.

"I think we can jam this open if we get a couple seconds of lead time when they come in next," he muttered. Whoever had installed the metal security door had done a piss-poor job. Granted, the chances that they'd get a couple of seconds of lead time was slim, but he wasn't going to ...

Something.

She might know anyway. She was smart, and not given to fooling herself. As long as he sounded confident she might believe they had a chance, but she had to know that their captors would probably come in with guns pointed at them. The way she was looking at him indicated she was thinking something of the sort.

"I can get their guns, no problem." Now he knew it was bravado, and she knew it too. It made her smile.

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

Both smiles faded as though they'd been wiped from their faces. She'd said something similar to him the last time they'd been together. He'd let himself get stupid, say something about being there for the girls. She'd told him not to make promises he couldn't, or shouldn't, keep. In this case it had been more of a shouldn't. He could disappear, he could change his name, his identity, live the quiet life for a while but the itch would come back. And he had enemies who would look for him. Chance was living proof of that.

Hell, what was happening to them now was proof of that.

"I won't let anything happen to you," he told her, and she nodded. Whatever happened, she knew he would get her back to her girls. "Besides. They're amateurs."

She snorted. "Don't get cocky," a pair of knitting needles pointed at him, before they resumed their clicking rhythm. He put on a look of injured pride, and she laughed. "I mean it. Even amateurs can pull a trigger."

Now he did go over to her, pulled her into his arms despite himself and the situation. There were scant millimeters of space between their bodies, but it was still space. She turned her cheek to his shoulder, her knitting needles flat between her palm and his chest. It gave him a half-formed idea, but that would have to wait.

"I know what I'm doing, remember?" he murmured into her hair. She still smelled of myrrh and wax from the Guadalupe candles. "I won't let anything happen to you. They're inexperienced. They'll make mistakes. Plus," and here he leaned back, hands sliding to her shoulders to catch her eyes. "I've got my buddy on the outside, his people are taking care of the girls, he's probably mobilizing to break us out. We just have to time it right, and keep an eye out for the cavalry."

Her mouth curled up a little at the corners. "This the same friend you used to run around with? Or one of them?"

Guerrero wasn't sure how to take that. It didn't seem to be a worry to her, anyway. "Something like that."

She nodded. "Good." And he realized he should have known better than to assume the woman who hired an assassin to kill her child-abusing husband would balk at being rescued by the assassin's similarly skilled friends.

"No running off with them, though." He pointed a finger at her, which she caught in the hand not holding her yarn. "I mean it."

She laughed. "Or you'll what? Sorry, there's only room on my dance card for one deadly assassin, and I believe that slot's filled."

It stabbed at him and filled him with soothing warmth all at the same time. It hurt. But after five years plus, she hadn't moved on any more than he had. "Good." He took a breath. "Just saying."

His fingers tightened in her blouse as the metal door started to ratchet up. Two seconds later he knew it was too late to try anything, he wasn't in position and he had no time. Carver walked in, flanked by two men with guns that were indeed pointing at her. One of them ripped the knitting out of her hands with his free hand and tossed it onto a chair, the other one grabbed her away from Guerrero. He let her go with minimal resistance, no point in making it harder on either of them than it needed to be.

They pushed her into the chair, pushed him into the other chair and kept their guns trained on both of them. The knitting needles slipped into the sleeve of his jacket while they were busy making sure she didn't do more than spit curses at them in two languages. He understood both, even smiled a little.

"What are you smiling at?"

The image of him with her knitting needles sticking out of his neck, blood pouring down Guerrero's hand at his throat.

"You're going to die very badly." His voice was soft, and he meant it. She knew that voice.

They started with the electrodes again. This time, they used a car battery.

\---

"Doesn't the man keep any kind of records of anything?" Winston grumped, rifling through papers and receipts and notes that made no sense out of context. Chance was on the computer. All they knew about the man who was doing this had to lead them to something, and if Winston couldn't find the short way to that information he'd take the long way. As long as some way got them to Guerrero and his lady in time.

"If he doesn't keep any files anywhere he can access, how does he know whether or not to take a job? What he did on a job before?" Winston kept grumbling. It was what he did in a crisis, Chance knew that. "Just makes it ten times more difficult, and how big an enemies list are we talking, anyway? How many people can one man have tortured and killed over his lifetime?"

There was a pause while they both looked at each other.

"Don't answer that."

Chance hadn't planned on it. His fingers flew faster over the keyboard; he wasn't a data miner, but he was writing it all down as fast as he could and sending it to Dawn, who was. She and her sister owed them a rescue anyway. Owed Guerrero a rescue. Eve was more his friend than Chance's, or at least it had started out that way.

The computer beeped. Dawn, sending a message that she got enough, keep sending whatever he could think of but she'd start now. Good.

He kept typing up as much as he could think of. About Guerrero's past, the likeliest timeline for when everything happened, all the windows of opportunity when he hadn't been working with the man or known what he was working on and something like this could have happened. Going back even past when Guerrero had probably taken up with her.

It nagged at him every time he thought about it. How serious had it been? How much time had he spent with her? Suddenly, and with a not entirely welcome pang of sympathy, he realized he was probably thinking something very similar to what Baptiste had been thinking. How many conversations had he and Guerrero had, about Katherine, about Maria, about others, while Guerrero had been thinking about this woman who had stolen his heart and bore his child. Chance hadn't even known he'd a heart to steal, not that way. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that Guerrero could or would fall in love.

Which made this woman all the more special. As shown by the fact that Guerrero had gone tearing off after her, not even stopping for backup.

"I swear, if I'd thought he had a girlfriend..." Whatever Winston would have done was left unsaid. He shook his head. "I knew it. I knew working with that psychopath was going to bite us in the ass someday, and..."

"Will you stop? He didn't do this, this isn't about him. This is about someone using an innocent woman and her two daughters against him, which, by the way, is not exactly the actions of an innocent man. She didn't do anything wrong, those kids haven't done anything wrong, and whatever you think of him he didn't do anything wrong by f--"

Winston stared at him, not in shock so much as with the expression of a man whose suspicions, no matter how initially wild, have been totally confirmed. "So he does..."

"Yes. No. I don't know, he never told me about her." The computer beeped. Dawn was sending him what she'd gathered so far; it wasn't pretty. "It happened... it must have happened around the time I left the Old Man. I wasn't thinking all that clear. And you were there after that."

"Yeah, I was. I was there, I saw how you two acted around each other, if you'd've told me back then that a man like that was capable of feeling feelings for another human being, I'd've told you you were nuts."

Chance leaned back and looked over at Winston. It wasn't an apology, but it was an allowance that what was happening wasn't Guerrero's fault. That it was a shitty situation, and yeah, Chance would admit that it was brought on by leading the kind of life he did. But something about what he said and the way he said it now as opposed to two minutes ago made it better. Maybe just that he admitted that he believed in Guerrero's attachment to the woman.

"I knew something had happened, I didn't know..." He looked over at where the kids were being entertained by Ames. Winston followed his gaze.

"Didn't know he had a daughter? Does he?"

Chance nodded. Everything about Guerrero's behavior with this suggested he knew, he knew Jeanne was his, and maybe he'd kept in touch with their mother. Hard to say.

Winston shook his head and went back to looking through what passed for Guerrero's files. "I'll be damned." And then, after another moment or two. "Cute little kid, though. Who'da thought."

Chance's shoulders relaxed a little more.

\---

"Okay, so, we followed the money on the phone, which led nowhere, by the way. But we cross-checked people whose families died in the right time frame and left a single survivor with resources enough to pull off this kind of job. And then we double checked that against your criteria, plus my profile..."

Chance's eyebrows arched, but it was what Eve did. She pulled together disparate bits of data and behavior that people didn't even realize they were doing and built a profile. A model of behavior, a way to predict things and manipulate others if she had to. And she was damn good at it. Her baby sister got the information, and she interpreted it to a form that was useful. Guerrero had trusted her on several occasions. Hell, he knew how good she was from his own run-ins with her. He had to trust her with this, too.

"... a contract put out on her. Alive. The girls, too. My guess would be, given the deaths of the families involved and what happened to them..."

Winston's eyebrows shot up and stayed there. Eve didn't elaborate, and neither did her expression flicker. Chance realized she must have learned what Guerrero had done to someone's wife and children, in order to get some information about the people who had taken him. She hadn't changed her opinion on him, at least, or if she had Chance wasn't seeing it.

"... I've got a list of suspects. It's a short list. And addresses. How many people can you have investigate this?"

He thought about it for a second. "Three. Ilsa can take the kids for a bit." Her bodyguards would protect them, at least from this. They were capable people, they could do that much.

"No safehouses? I could set you up..." Or Dawn could. Chance shook his head.

"No safehouses. I want them with someone at all times, a moving target is harder to hit than a stationary one. These guys may be amateurs, but they're not stupid. And I don't want to make things easy for them."

Eve nodded. "Anything else you need?"

A couple extra warm bodies wouldn't go amiss, people he could trust, but she had moved out of the area and he didn't have time to call in or brief anyone else. And he wasn't sure he wanted to trust anyone else with Guerrero's secret. He'd done enough damage trusting Winston and Eve and Dawn. His old friend wouldn't be happy about that.

"Give us the addresses of your top three, we'll split 'em up here between us." She sent them over while he spoke. And she didn't ask any further questions, thank god. "Thanks. And..."

"Don't tell anyone about this, don't breathe a word of it, don't tell the little shit I know about it. Let you know if there's anything else I've figured out or Dawn's dug up, otherwise stay out of touch. Yes?"

His smile was wry but not hollow, which was a first for the day. "That's about it."

"Uh-huh. Good luck. Let me know how it turns out. In, oh, several weeks."

Winston shook his head after Chance broke the connection. He still hadn't recovered from seeing Eve gyrate all over Guerrero's lap at the strip club. "I hope she's right about this."

Chance was already on his feet and getting ready, gearing up and dialing Ilsa's number. "It's better than what we've got so far, unless you found something in his notes."

Which he hadn't, and they both knew it. Winston shook his head and waited until Chance was off the phone with Ilsa to register his objection. "Are you sure you want to bring Ames in on this? What happens if she finds Guerrero first?"

The thought of Ames rescuing Guerrero and his wife, girlfriend, whatever she was ... he didn't even know what to make of that. "As long as someone finds them and gets them out of there, I'm not sure I care all that much which of us it is." Ames leaned in the doorway and stared at him. "Gear up. We've got three addresses, each of us is taking one, and..."

And that was the elevator. Ilsa was on her way up.

"Let's go."

\---

He didn't tell anyone why this address seemed the most likely, but he'd half-recognized the name on it. A bad case, a bad man who'd tried to be what he and Guerrero had done a much better job of being, and paid the price for it. He'd come up against Guerrero and lost in a contest of wills and intimidation, mostly because he threatened while Guerrero just did.

Carver had threatened to kill Chance and Baptiste, not that it would have been easy, to get Joubert to back off a case. So Joubert had sent in Guerrero, who didn't make threats at all. He just killed the man's entire family and left them for him to find.

"Don't make threats," Chance muttered. "Just do it. Just say what you're going to do, say what you want, and if you don't get it, do it." A simple method of operation for a simpler time; they couldn't do that with Ilsa in charge, now. And the time had come when he regretted that. On the other hand, having Ilsa around came in handy when they needed whatever resources they wanted to call up in a blink, cars, weapons. When they needed someone with half a dozen bodyguards to take the girls so they could go find their parents.

He parked down the street, in front of someone else's house who, by the number of newspapers piled up in their front driveway, wasn't home. Didn't anyone know basic security measures anymore?

Maybe not. And looking around at the subdivision, Chance guessed that was because half of these houses at least hadn't sold. Which made it also pretty quiet and unpopulated, a good place to hold and keep prisoners. And torture them. There was probably torture going on. Two sentences of a newspaper article about the condition of the bodies was enough to tell him that this guy would want to see people tortured before he felt he had satisfactory revenge.

And if that meant he had to carry Guerrero and the woman out, well, so be it. He was prepared to do that, too.

There were a couple cars at the address. One of them, a big dark green SUV looking thing, and the other a long sedan with what Guerrero would have called an nicely roomy trunk. No sign of anything unusual in the front, though it was hard to tell with the curtains drawn like that. The hedges were trimmed down to the front, but in the next yard over there were a couple of tall trees. Enough for him to sneak into the hedge row in front of the house and crouch down between the bushes and the wall, raising up a small mirror to see.

This was the house, all right. That was probably even the right room. He couldn't see anything, on account of the windows were all either covered in opaque plastic sheeting or had security shutters in front of them. Which meant there was no way of telling specifically where they were.

"Dammit."

Chance moved around the house. Staying out of sight when he could, acting as though he was wandering around, just a neighbor in the yard when he couldn't.

The living room was the only one that was modified to have no visibility from or to the outside. Probably reinforced walls, too. The garage looked like it was reinforced as well but there was a basement door that hadn't been bothered with. He stopped there for half a moment with a set of lockpicks.

"Hey, what are you..."

Too irritated for subtle, he could at least manage quiet. Fingers driving into the man's throat ensured he wouldn't be talking to anyone for a while, then a quick series of hard, sharp hits while he was gurgling on his own blood and spittle. Slamming his head in the door was too noisy, but damned if it wouldn't have been satisfying. He left the man tied and unconscious in the basement and crept up the stairs.

By the time he got to the kitchen he realized why her screaming sounded so muffled and quiet; the living room had reinforced walls and a metal safety door. It looked utterly ridiculous and out of place in the otherwise tidy and upper-class family home. But at least it had a door. Chance took a second to debate whether it would be easier to go in now or wait till they came out. She screamed again, and he discarded the last remnants of subtlety in favor of grabbing the shotgun on the counter of the kitchen island and shooting the lock. Twice.

Guerrero leaned away from the first shot, ducked his head from the second. Shrapnel sprayed him and the man holding a gun on him anyway. Chance reversed the shotgun in his hand in one smooth motion and brought the butt end down on the man's wrist, smashing it as hard as he could. Maybe crushing it, he couldn't tell. By the time the other two men registered that someone had just come crashing through the door he'd crossed the room, grabbing the gun and forcing it downwards, driving his elbow into the mook's face.

She screamed again. He smelled, or maybe he just thought he smelled, burning flesh. "Turn it off." He was holding a gun on Carver and he didn't remember turning around.

Carver seemed to realize he was dead no matter what he did. His lips peeled back from his teeth. "No." More jolts of electricity. A low level hum eclipsed by her panting and sobbing. Guerrero was thrashing around in his ties and had almost gotten himself free, too. Chance blinked once, then shot the shit out of the battery and the contraption she was hooked up to.

And then they could all breathe again. Chance kept the gun on the bastard, pulled a knife from the back of his belt and tossed it to Guerrero, who cut the last of his bonds. "Thanks, dude."

"No problem." There was more, but it could wait while he got her free. Chance kept one eye on the bastard, one eye on Guerrero. Watching his hands move over her, checking her legs, her body, her arms and making sure they all worked properly. Watching how she bent towards him, biting her lip to keep from sobbing. He'd been electrocuted before, it was no fun. Limbs twitching afterwards. She was holding still, holding it together for his sake. Just as he was being calm and steady for hers.

He got her loose and caught her when she fell forward into his arms. "Easy, easy there..." he murmured, low enough that Chance barely caught the words. Her dark hair spilled over his hands on her shoulders, obscuring both their faces for a second as he lowered her down to the floor. "It's okay, just take a couple breaths... it's okay."

Chance felt like he was intruding on some kind of private moment, worse than if he'd walked in on, well, something else. Her hands curled over Guerrero's shoulders and bunched up the fabric of his shirt in her fingers.

"Hurts..." she breathed. "Ow." And some words in Spanish that respectable mothers didn't say, but anyone who attached themselves to Guerrero definitely knew.

"I know. I know, I'm sorry..." One hand rubbed along her shoulder, strong hand and delicate fingers. "Can you stand? We gotta get you out of here..."

She nodded before he'd even finished the sentence. "I can walk."

Uh. Determination was all very well, but Chance didn't think that was too likely. "I'll get her out of here. You get back to the office when you can, okay?" Because he knew how this was going to end. How it had to end. But that didn't mean they couldn't say good-bye, and after what he'd been through with Maria he wanted Guerrero to have that chance to say good-bye. Especially with Jeanne.

Guerrero looked over at him and nodded. Slow and jerky, and his eyes were distant behind the glasses. "Okay." But they stood, her leaning heavily on him and clutching tight enough that her fingers left imprints in the fabric of his vest when he transferred her weight from himself to Chance. "Okay. I'll be back soon."

Soon-ish. After this, Guerrero wasn't done with the guy anytime soon.

Chance scooped her up into his arms before she could register what he intended to do and protest. This time, they'd be taking the front door out. "I can walk," she mumbled, and he ignored her. Except to keep her angled so that his body was between her and Guerrero as he edged them both out the door. He caught one glimpse of his friend over his shoulder as they left. He was staring down at the man on the ground with an ugly look on his face. The last time Chance had seen that expression on him he'd been coated in blood up to his elbows, both wet and drying. Even if she knew what kind of person he was, she didn't need to see that.

\---

The whole team could see them. The office was glass walls and no curtains, of course they could see them. The only thing being in that conference room gave them was the illusion of privacy, but it seemed to be enough.

"Will you guys stop that?" Chance suggested. No one listened to him.

It didn't seem to matter, Guerrero and her weren't paying them any attention anyway. Ames didn't seem to know how to react, but she hadn't gone barging in there yet. Winston didn't believe it and didn't want to interrupt, for the first time, not because he didn't want to deal with Guerrero but because he felt they didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve it.

They watched the conversation taking place as subtly as they could. Chance didn't bother looking directly at them, just kept an eye out to the side.

"I don't believe this." Winston muttered for the third or fourth time, half-hearted, keeping an ear out but only able to pick up the body language. It should have been enough to tell him everything he wanted to know about them.

Chance knew what it looked like, too, without having to look around. He knew what Guerrero's face looked like, calm and open, and his old friend was holding her hands. Guerrero didn't initiate contact people without it being an assault of some kind or a polite fiction. But he was holding her hands and hadn't let go since they'd come into the building. They weren't doing anything more than that, what with the walls being glass and all. Ilsa had a funny look on her face as she watched them.

"I don't... can you believe this? Really?" Ames asked, with that scrunched up look she got whenever she didn't understand something.

"Even wolves have mates," Ilsa murmured.

Chance looked her way just long enough for her to notice the scrutiny and him to catch her gaze, and then they both pretended nothing momentous or tragic was happening.

\---

They looked at each other for several long minutes. His hands were warm around her cooler ones, gentle and softer than usual. Gun oil. His thumb brushed over the back of her hand.

He took a breath and she opened her mouth to speak before he could. "Don't…"

"Mrs. Pucci has a private plane. She'll take…"

"… do it. Don't …"

"… you to your new home, get you set up in your new life. I've been told it's very…"

"… you dare."

"… nice."

His eyes flickered down long enough for her to take a step closer to him, into his personal space. She twisted her hands so that her fingers laced through his and his shoulders knotted instantly as he looked back at her. His breathing slowed down to killing levels.

"You need to go," he told her, quietly. "It's not safe here anymore."

Her dark eyes flickered over his face, her lips parted to find words to argue that, but she didn't say anything. Because there were no words. It was the truth they'd been avoiding for years. Sneaking time, mostly him, to spend with her. Taking precautions and pretending it was enough. Sending him pictures uploaded from a thumb drive to a computer on an internet cafe via an email address that was discarded as soon as it was made, it wasn't enough. It hadn't been then, and it wouldn't be the next time someone wanted to get to Guerrero. Maybe someone with better resources, the next time.

"I don't want to go." Nothing like, _I can handle it_ , because they both knew she couldn't. And even if she could, Jeanne and Naomi couldn't. Neither of them would put the girls at risk. Or be so selfish as to put them in a foster home so they could have each other. She wouldn't suggest it, and he wouldn't ask.

He nodded, slightly. "I know." Strangled, a little, because it wasn't what he meant to say. He didn't want her to go either, but after a lifetime of avoiding this kind of contact he didn't know what words to use.

Which was okay. She understood. He hoped.

They stood there for several more minutes. Both of them were far too aware of their spectators to do much of anything, even though he wanted to. More than anything, which was a heady and not altogether comfortable feeling. He wanted to pull her into his arms and not let her go, to keep her for as long as he could, and to hell with anyone who wanted to take her away. He wanted it bad enough to feel the emptiness as he turned, took her hand in his, and pushed the door open.

Of course when they went out, everyone pretended to be looking somewhere else, except for Chance. His old friend looked over at him, one eyebrow slightly raised. Guerrero in turn lifted a shoulder a fraction of an inch and dropped it again, a barely noticeable shrug.

He dropped her fingers the moment Winston looked up and over at them, straightening, shoulders tight. The couch was over in a different corner but he could still perch on one end, one foot drawn up and the other on the floor. He heard her take one step and stop, by the sound of her shoes on the floor. He kept his head up, so he saw her kids look from him to her again, and the older girl gave him an uneasy glare.

"Mommy? Why are you sad?"

"Mom, are you okay? Did…"

She pulled their daughter against her with one arm, draped the other arm around her teenage daughter's shoulders. "I'm all right, I'm fine. We're going to go down to a car, now, and Chance is going to take us to another place. A safer place. Explanations later," she added, as Naomi opened her mouth to ask or protest or something. "Go get your stuff, and we'll get going."

"But what about..." The girl's voice trailed off at one look at her mother's face. Guerrero didn't look. He didn't want to know. It was safer this way.

Ilsa went down with the girls and Chance to the car, to give directions to the driver and consult on arranging for movers to pack up the house. One set to pack up the house and load it into a truck, which would be taken by trustworthy drivers to the new location. None of which would be connected to Guerrero. He hoped. Winston headed towards the elevator as well, to check on his cop contacts and make sure they didn't find any leads back at the house that would lead them back to Guerrero, and by proxy, Ilsa.

Which left Ames, standing there staring at him. He stared back at her. If there was ever a time when he wasn't in the mood for her bullshit, this was all of those times.

"Sorry," she mumbled, looking down and away and then turning to find something, anything else to do. Anything that was not in his presence.

Guerrero stared after her for a second, then went to the window and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. "Yeah. Me too."


End file.
